Beyond the Gates of Antares – A new miniatures game from Rick Priestley

Well, according to the Kickstarter page for Beyond the Gates of Antares it is “a brand new science fiction wargame universe from Rick Priestley…” In an interesting tack, Dark Space Corp and Priestley (whose previous design experience includes a ton if games you’ve probably heard of) explicitly note that they are not going on Kickstarter with the sort of ‘almost-finished-projects’ that you get from a lot of Kickstarters. Instead, the group want to turn to the community – specifically the community members who are interested in pledging money – to define exactly what Beyond the Gates of Antares will be. According to the Kickstarter page, backers will be able to assist in developing “the game rules, artwork, miniature range, tactical abilities, scenery, venicles and everything else.” So, they could have just said “everything,” but I guess that has a less poetic ring. It is – essentially – a tabletop wargame with tied-together online functions so that the how battles between players go shape the game world (at least, in theory).

Are there any hints as to what the gameplay of Beyond the Gates of Antares will be?

Yeah, there are a few on the Kickstarter page. Specifically, they mention that Beyond the Gates of Antares will hve units that “act and react according to their combat stats” and that the game universe will be builty dynamically and in real time. That sounds impressive, but I’m more interested in seeing how it works in exection. Also, to put it more simply, it looks like – as players play the game – they can send their results in and those results (after a set amount of time) will be used to determine which armies control which territories going forward in the official meta fiction. Still, there are some firm details about what the Beyond the Gates of Antares world is all about over on the Kickstarter page, so it is not like it looks like they are starting completely from scratch. Instead, there is a pretty nice little write-up about the world that they have built for Beyond the Gates of Antares.

So, what do I get for my money if I decided to back Beyond the Gates of Antares?

Well, anyone that pledges at least £1 will get access to the Alpha and Beta copies of the rulebooks, £20 will get a final copy of the PDF of the rules, £25 gets you a hard copy of the rules, and £65 gets you a starter box (and more money gets you more stuff, obviously).

Some final thoughts on Beyond the Gates of Antares

Miniatures projects often live-or-die based on two things: player buy-in (having a wide enough playerbase that the game continues to thrive in league play) and gameplay. The design team for Beyond the Gates of Antares has a very nice pedigree, indeed, so it looks like it might be an interesting one to watch going forward. It’s a long Kickstarter campaign (56 days left as I write this), but it looks all but certain to get out ahead of its goal. It’s interesting to see someone trying to push miniatures games to be even bigger – campaign play is such a big part of the game for people I have known that integrating it further seems like a great idea – but there is a lot of work that goes into actually creating an interesting and fluid story out of what the players do. More information is available from the Beyond the Gates of Antares Kickstarter page as well as the official web page.

About Michael

Michael is an enthusiast about a lot of things, including indie games, roleplaying games, board games, and comic books that wanted to help create a place where he could bring things to the attention of those with similar interests. Futile Position is a true labor of labor, which he hopes continues to grow through the support of the great readers who have come upon this page.